NIKA ELDER: What distinguishes a painting from a print? A painting from a poster? And the answer that Harnett embeds within the painting is that it is this craftsmanship. He's really trying to underscore the value of a painting as a handmade object.

NARRATOR: Set against a wooden cupboard, we can recognize a violin, bow, piccolo and sheet music of an Irish ballad representing the place where the artist was born. Nika Elder, associate professor of art history at American University.

NIKA ELDER: There's a horseshoe, a metallic matchbox, a little cartellino, which is a card that has the artist’s name on it and functions like a signature.

NARRATOR: From the gleaming metal to the convincing cast of shadows, the objects in this still life look so real it’s as if you might grasp them in your hand. 

NIKA ELDER: The way the sheet music is slightly torn and that torn piece is turned upwards. Also the small card at the bottom there too you could see the bottom right corner lifts up just a little bit. We know that paper can tip up in those ways.That heightens the realism within the painting. 

When we look at it now we might think of it as having a kind of 19th century aesthetic, but even to people in the 19th century it would look kind of old-fashioned. They were living in a moment of rapid industrialization and so this would really look incommensurate with what they would be seeing in stores, at fairs, where a painting like this one by Harnett would be encountered.